


Fall 2015 Prompt Fills

by cheinsaw



Category: Love Live! School Idol Project, Senki Zesshou Symphogear, Touhou Project
Genre: F/F, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-28
Updated: 2015-11-27
Packaged: 2018-05-03 17:46:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 2,436
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5300855
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cheinsaw/pseuds/cheinsaw
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A series of short pieces and requests that I did around tumblr and twitter in the past couple of months.</p><p>1. Symphogear | Chris hating Hibiki's dad, Hibiki/Miku<br/>2. Symphogear | platonic Chris/Maria, "foreign"<br/>3. Symphogear | Chris, "playing the melody"<br/>4. Love Live | Nico/Hanayo, "love"<br/>5. Touhou | Eiki/Komachi, "flowers"<br/>6. Touhou | semiplatonic Mamizou/Nue, finding an ice cream truck</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. a mess

Miku is used to screening the voicemails before Hibiki gets home. Anyone who needs to contact Hibiki or Miku would do it directly through their cell phones, so the messages left on their rarely-used home phone are mostly reminders for doctor’s appointments, charities looking for money, the occasional reporter looking to run an article on SONG’s taskforce. These are all normal. What isn’t is the scruffy, lazy voice that greets Miku when she checks in the late afternoon, while she and Chris are hard at work addressing letters.

“Ah… Hey, Hibiki…” It’s been so long, but Miku knows that voice. She’d know it anywhere. “Look, I know we haven’t talked in a long time, but, well… Heard you’re getting married… Dunno how I feel about it, but it’s what makes you happy, right? I’d like to come see it–”

Miku presses the pound key to delete the message before even hearing the rest of it. Whatever Hibiki’s father has to say, Miku knows that neither she nor Hibiki wants to deal with it. Hands slightly trembling, she hangs up and places the phone down on the table.

“Who was that?” Chris asks from where she sits opposite Miku, a large pile of cards, envelopes, and pens between them.

Miku bites her lip. “Hibiki’s father. She hasn’t heard from him in years, and now… He says he wants to come see us get married.”

“Never can trust people like that,” Chris sighs, and jams another invitation into its envelope. “Dickbag.”

Miku nods in affirmation, then returns to her work of handwriting addresses on the envelopes. It would break Hibiki’s heart to have to see her father again, never mind having him show up uninvited at her wedding. Miku’s already sworn to herself to make it the happiest day of Hibiki’s life. For all the things Hibiki’s given her, she can at least give Hibiki that.

“So, what’s his full name?” Chris asks, now typing something into her phone. “You wanna make sure he doesn’t show up, right?”

“Yeah.” After so many years working together, it feels like Chris knows Miku’s intentions before she even realizes them herself. “Kou Tachibana. I’m not sure where he lives, though.”

“Okay, gimme a blank card.”

“None of them are blank,” Miku says. “They all have, um… You Are Cordially Invited on the front.”

“Whatever.” Chris passes her phone across the table to Miku. “You’re better at this. Find this asshole’s address and I’ll write him a little note.”

“Will that be okay? He won’t bother us?”

“I’ll make sure he never even gets close to your wedding,” Chris says. “And if this doesn’t convince him I wouldn’t mind going to his place an’ giving him a few bullets to the knees for you.” She flashes Miku a smile, and goes to work on her card. Seconds later she hands it back to Miku, her grin wider and more wicked than before. “Read.”

Miku does, her eyes widening before she bursts into giggles. “Chris!”

“It’s great, huh?” Chris beams. “So he sees it and thinks you’re inviting him to your wedding, and then he opens it and you’re actually just inviting him to piss off.” Her face softens into seriousness before she continues, “But really, if he tries anything, I’ll fucking kill him.”

“Um, I don’t think you need to actually kill him…” Miku says, smiling. “But thank you. I know we both don’t want Hibiki to worry at all.”

“No problem. We gotta look out for that idiot, right?”

“Mmm.”

And soon enough, the wedding invitations are done, and Hibiki is home, and she greets Chris with a hug and Miku with a kiss. And Kou Tachibana does not come to the wedding.


	2. platonic Chris/Maria - Foreign

“Come on,” Maria says, hoisting Shirabe’s sleeping body off Chris’s couch and into her arms. “Kirika, I can’t pick you up, you have to walk.”

“I’m tired,” Kirika complains, letting her head fall against Maria’s arm. “Senpai can… carry me…”

“Not a chance,” Chris says. “I’m going to bed the second you guys get outta here.”

Maria nods. “It’s late. Thank you for having them, like always.”

“It’s fine.”

“Bye, Chris-senpai…” Kirika mumbles, half-waving from the doorstep.

“See ya.”

Once her door’s locked and her visitors have left, Chris slumps back down onto the couch. A tiny notebook is lying forgotten in the corner, half-pushed under a cushion. It’s not Chris’s. Obviously, there’s only one solution.

“Hey, you dropped your–” Chris starts to say to the night air outside her front door, but Maria is already gone.

 

The next time they’re both at HQ, Chris wastes no time in presenting the little book back to Maria. “This was at my house. ’S either yours or one of theirs. But don’t think I read it or anything.”

To her surprise, Maria laughs. “I doubt you could.” She opens the notebook up to a random page, showing Chris lines and lines of sloping cursive. She’s right. Chris can’t read a damn thing.

“What language is that?”

“Russian,” Maria answers, closing the book and returning it to her jacket’s pocket. “I don’t have many chances to practice it anymore, now that Mom’s gone…”

Chris makes a small noise in what she hopes sounds like condolence. Her own parents are dead as well, but she never had a chance to mourn them. Not like Maria’s doing now for a woman who was never related to her by blood. "She spoke Russian?“

"She was Russian.” Maria closes her eyes. “We mainly talked to each other in it, when we could. Kirika and Shirabe know a little, but Mom really wanted to make sure I stayed fluent.”

“Huh…” Chris stretches. “My parents never did any of that for me. I mean, I was little when they died, but like… I don’t even know what I am besides Japanese.”

“Well, that’s okay. I’m sure they cared about you a lot, right? I noticed you have that shrine for them in your house…”

“Oh.” Chris has had it so long she sometimes forgets it’s there, visible to other people. “Yeah. I guess they did. I dunno. SONG is kinda more of a family to me now.”

Maria’s visibly taken aback. Then she softens, a smile spreading across her whole face. “You’re right,” she says. “It is. For all of us.”

And to her own surprise, Chris feels herself crack a smile back.


	3. Chris - playing the melody

Chris hates songs. She hates cadences and melodies and tune, hates filling her lungs with air and belting out lyrics that well up inside her when she wears a relic’s armor, hates that this is the only way she can fight. This is the only way she can prove herself. The only way she can win.

How cruel it all is. How awful, to live in such a cold world.

 

Maria has apartments in three countries, some more lavish than others. It’s more of a comfort than a necessity: having a place to call home in Japan as well as Italy, having somewhere to return at the end of the day. A little excessive, yes, but after her early life in poverty no one at SONG dares to blame her.

In the center of her Tokyo apartment is a piano, a vase of white flowers resting on its closed lid. She plays sometimes, Shirabe’s told Chris, when she thinks no one is listening. She gets embarrassed if anyone hears, Kirika added. She thinks she’s no good.

It was always Serena’s talent anyway.

 

The keys still feel familiar. For a moment, Chris is six again and sitting in her mother’s lap, her hands guiding Chris’s over the keys. And Chris is happy. She presses down on one key, C sharp, letting it ring brightly through the room and fade out. 

Fine had a piano. It was big, a full parlor grand that she never played. Chris would eye it, but Fine never asked, so Chris never touched it. It was probably for the best, in the end. Her time with Fine was mainly spent in pain, letting Fine take and take and take. Fine took so much from her. But she couldn’t take the music from Chris’s blood.

Chris remembers, somewhere deep inside, from long before everything went to hell. The heart and soul of a piano is in the fingertips that touch it, the decision made to play with joy or with sorrow.

It has been so long. But Chris still knows how to play with love.


	4. Nico/Hanayo - love

“All of them are organized by group and then by date. It’s, um, all in this folder right here.” Hanayo double-clicks on an icon in her laptop’s browser, opening a window filled with hundreds–no,  _thousands_ –of MP3s, some of them over 30 minutes long. A neat list of subfolders reveals even more, putting the folder’s total contents at a stunning 3,386 items.

Nico really has to hand it to Hanayo. The girl is a veritable encyclopedia of all things school idol, from merchandise to collectibles to trivia to bootlegs. She has recordings of shows Nico wasn’t even able to go to. She says she did some of them herself. She’s the only person in the world who knows as much about as idols as Nico does. And that makes her the only person in the world Nico can really connect with about her greatest love.

“This is amazing,” Nico says. “I want it all. Can you upload it somewhere?”

“I, um! I actually have most of it on my blog…” Hanayo says shyly. “If you wanted you’d be able to get it from there. But some of the recordings are kind of bad quality, since they were from surprise lives, and I had to get them on my phone, so… If you’d still want those even though they’re not great… I can email them…”

“Sure.”

“Ah, s-sorry!” Hanayo yelps suddenly. “Sorry, I started talking a lot, I get carried away because I just… Really love school idols…” Her voice trails off.

“Hanayo,” Nico says, turning around and placing her hand on Hanayo’s shoulder. “You’re not boring me. I want to see all of this. If we want to get to the Love Live, we have to know our competition, and we have to be better than them.”

“Right!” Hanayo squeaks. “Although, um, Nico-chan… Aren’t you…”

“Am I what?”

“Aside from the Love Live, when we aren’t competing, we can just be fans. You…” Hanayo’s clearly struggling for the words. “I mean, you love the music too, Nico-chan!”

Nico’s eyes widen, and she quickly has to regain her composure. “Well! I guess. A little. You don’t get to be president of the idol research club without liking idols, right?”

Hanayo giggles. “Yes?”

“Now, anyway, I want to hear the S-GIRLS Halloween concert from last year again. Do you have that?”

“Of course!” Hanayo pushes her glasses up on the bridge of her nose in determination, and locates the file in seconds. The sound of a crowd cheering fills the little room, enveloping two teenage girls in what they both love the most.


	5. Eiki/Komachi - flowers

Red spider lilies are hardly a rare sight for Komachi. Higan’s full of them. They’re a familiar comfort to her, their spindly petals and curving red stamens. They represent her task, her charges, the souls of the dead who have yet to pass on. Where humans find them frightening, Komachi prefers to see them as soothing.

Of course, her boss doesn’t share the sentiment.

“This is inappropriate, Komachi,” Eiki says, gesturing to the bouquet of spider lilies Komachi’s holding in her arms.

“Uh, Shiki-sama, I think it’s actually very appropriate,” Komachi tries.

Eiki’s eyes narrow. “Would you care to explain?”

“Oh, well, it’s just… Your office is so, y’know…  _plain_? I think people might feel a little less uncomfortable if you had some color in here.”

“That isn’t what I meant.” Eiki folds her hands around the Rod of Remorse, the way she does when she’s thinking. “You’re correct. …We could benefit from a _slight_  bit of decoration. But absolutely not the higanbana.”

“Huh?”

“If we are to do this, I’d like the souls to feel neutral. Please reconsider your choice of flowers and report back to me with something a little less frightening, especially considering our line of work.”

“Got it, Shiki-sama.” Komachi isn’t sure she understands what just happened. Did Eiki just  _agree_  with her on something? There has to be some kind of explanation. Maybe Eiki secretly just wants something to care for that requires little attention. Or maybe–and it’s unlikely, but Komachi can dream–Eiki actually likes the idea of Komachi bringing her flowers.

It doesn’t matter. She’ll find a hundred different flowers if it makes Eiki happy.


	6. Mamizou/Nue - ice cream truck

It was probably white once, Nue figures. The beaten-down, rusty contraption in front of her has certainly seen better days, but is now covered in swirls of rainbow graffiti and flaking paint chips. Its front window is smashed. The inside is riddled with dead leaves and crumpled plastic wrappers. The forest has quickly adapted, moss and ferns growing around and on the thing's huge frame.

It's perfect.

"Whatta they call these things outside?"

"This is a van. A slightly larger car," Mamizou helpfully supplies. "This specific one seems to have been converted into an ice cream truck."

Nue knows ice cream, but not truck. "What's..."

"Ah, just imagine... A mobile vehicle that's very cold inside that visits all the children to give them ice cream in the summer. For a small monetary fee, of course, for the expenses."

"We could do that. We can get it working again, yeah?"

Mamizou furrows her brow. "I'm not sure if it's suited for the terrain of Gensokyo." She pauses, turning towards her partner. "...Nue, if you just want a place to be alone, there are much better ways to go about acquiring one."

Nue bites her lip. Mamizou can always see right through her, which is mildly annoying at best. "Yeah, but! This one's cold inside, right?"

Mamizou sighs, smiling. "Oh, dear. That would require a lot more fixing up than you think. If a car made its way here on its own, it's been unsalvageable for a long, long time," she explains, seeing the look on Nue's face.

"No fun allowed," Nue complains.

"Oh, hush, my love. Would you like me to treat you to ice cream later?"

"Only if we get to come back an' eat it here."

Mamizou gives Nue's hair a little ruffle. "That's fine by me. Shall we continue our walk?"

"Yeah." And the forest is silent once more, small abandoned tokens of the outside sinking further into Gensokyo.


End file.
